


Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy

by hariboo



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Background Relationships, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Forced Bonding, Gen, Injury, We're Not Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 22:38:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hariboo/pseuds/hariboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He looks like he's dying and they both know there's a chance he is. She's better off, but not by much. Cave ins are not fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fuzzy_paint](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzy_paint/gifts).



> Advent gift fic.

Loki looks too pale, which is saying something. Jane's only glimpsed his jotunn form once, something she suspects only made him dislike her more because for him it seemed it was once too much, but it's almost as the blue of his natural born skin is peeking from under the pale pink flesh of his face. He looks like he's dying and they both know there's a chance he is.

She's better off, but not by much.

Her head wound stopped bleeding, making a few chunks of hair stick uncomfortably together at her temple, but her skull still pounds and her breathing isn't as easy as it should be. She's not dying, but she's still badly hurt. Her left leg is stuck under a pile of rocks and left her shoulder feels crushed, even though it's free. The pain is near overwhelming.

Loki is worse, at the very least he looks worse. His right side is impaled and rocks cover more than half his body. He looks dead, blurring at the edges in Jane's vision as she squints. His shape seemingly held together by his armour. Jane knows they needs to get that spear out off his side, but he can't move at all and her legs are stuck. He used magic to keep the cave from collapsing in on them and then passed out. He only woke up a few minutes ago, cursing at the growing pool of blood from where Jane can see the spear's tip exit his body. It's gotta hurt.

"We need to get that out of you," she tries to shift, dislodge some rocks, and grimaces; her shoulder protesting the movement, her leg barely getting out an inch.

Loki breathes shallowly, "Excellent deduction, doctor."

"Not that kind of doctor," Jane grits her teeth. "I can get it out, and I know how to use the healing stones."

If it's a laugh or a wheeze that escapes his lips, Jane's not sure. "And you'll use them to save me? The World Killer, the Lie-Smith?"

"Yes." Tries really hard not to roll her eyes. (Really hard.)

Loki lifts his head an inch at her answer and the twist of his lips is only a shadow of the sneer he normally presents to her. She's not sure that's a good thing. "Do you not trust your beloved Thor to save you?"

Jane shifts against the rocks again. Her shoulder burns. Something inside her flares up in pain so bright that she can't pinpoint where it's coming from; it feels like it's everywhere. Doubling over, coughing, the world wobbling in front of her. She can hear Loki's sharp hiss of words saying something she doesn't catch. Only the bite in the speech and the urgency which he delivers it in makes it through her senses. She doesn't pass out though. The world rights itself. It takes a minute to catch her breath and for the pain to dull enough to answer him back.

"Thor's coming, I know it," she says, closing her eyes. Still it would be nice if he hurried up. Loki scoffs at her loyalty. She ignores him, takes a deep breath, adds, "You know it, too." Loki snaps at her. Jane focuses on moving her body, inch by inch, muscle by muscle, into a position that doesn't make her ache. Loki growls at her. With his shallow breathing it doesn't sounds as threatening as he probably wants it too. She cracks a grin imagining an angry kitten in a cast. (Darcy and her kitten links are a horrible influence.)

"You sound asthmatic." Opening her eyes, she turns her head to where she can the edge of spear's tip poking out of his right side, dripping his blood on to the floor, about seven feet away from her. When the cave collapsed they were on opposite sides of it. The dark elves attack surprised them all of them and Loki was forced to defend not only himself but her. Jane's sure she finds more humour in that than he does.

"What is that?"

What is he… Oh.

"It's a respiratory condition some humans have. Makes it difficult to breath." She coughs into her hand, shoulder flaring in pain again. The blood specks she sees on her palm make her swallow. So, she got some internal injuries too. Maybe Loki isn't the only that might die.

"Thor will be here soon."

"Your faith in him is borderline nauseating," Loki mutters, making her laugh. It's a bad idea. Her body shifts too much. The world wobbles again. She thinks she hears him says something.

Blinking, forcing the world back in focus, she asks, "What?"

Jane can only see half of his face. It's even paler than before under the dirt from the cave floor. Not longer tinged with the blue of frostbite but bone white. Bloodless. She thinks of the blood pooling at his side. He looks like a ghost. Jane briefly wonders what she looks like that his eyes seem so bright.

Does he see death in her, too?

A few months ago Thor told her about Hela. Loki's daughter in name though not in blood. It's a complicated story she's still not sure she understood when it was explained. The Queen of the Underworld. Keeper of the Dead, the Unworthy of Valhalla. Jane is to be her aunt after a fashion. She wonders if Loki was thinking about her as well.

His eyes drop, only a slit of bright poison apple green meeting hers as he mutters something. The rocks by her legs shift. The weight holding her down is gone and instinct has her scrambling away. A bright lick of pain flashes from her feet to her shoulder but Jane pushes it away. On her knees she turns to Loki.

He is colourless. The dark pool of blood growing from his wound and the steady drip of the spear. She hears him mumble that he has healing stones even as she moves towards him and closes her hands over the spear's staff. All her muscles protest the move. Loki hisses. She uses the spear to pull herself up, her previously trapped leg pulsing in pain. Loki curses.

"What are you waiting for, get the stones!"

"We have to get this out first!"

"Stubborn ant!"

Jane chokes a laugh, tightening her grip, "Pushy boot!" Yeah she knows all about his rant to Fury. Tony is another horrible influence.

She pulls. It doesn't move. Biting down on her lips she pulls again. Everything hurts.

The spear feels alive in her hand, pulsing with strong magic even she can feel, as she rips it from Loki's body. His scream of pain is almost drowned up by her own of exertion. She falls back under the force she used and the weakness of her legs. The world tilts and she drops to her knees. Her breathing is heavy, coughs wrack her body, and her hair falls in twisted clumps around her face. More than a few sticky and tinted red.

It looks like she's kneeling, worshipping.

Loki isn't paying attention to her and she almost feels bad he's missing this moment of having her bend at the knee for him, but he's got good reason. He's pressing one pale hand to the wound. The blood seeping from his body is already coating it. By her knees the bloody tip of the spear dirties her jeans. Jane lets go it. The spear clatters to the ground and she shoves it aside it already moving to the edges of Loki's coat, searching for where he stashes his pouch of healing stones.

"Inner pocket," he wheezes.

Jane clenches her jaw. "Where do you think I'm looking!"

"Then find it, woman."

Opening her mouth to snap at him, she coughs. Her mouth tastes like copper. Loki's face pales further, impressive considering how pale he already is, and he appears to lift his hand from the wound.

"Don't!" she orders. To her surprise he doesn't argue.

Her hand finds the pouch and pulls it out from his coat. Opening it, she closes her eyes and sends a quick prayer up to whoever is listening and reaches in. Her hand closes over one stone in a bag of dust. She knows what the dust means. Swallowing, she opens her eyes and grins at Loki whose eyes are trained on her face. They flash to her hands.

Jane pulls out a stone. He exhales in relief. Crawling to the wound on his side she pushes his blood coated hands away from his wound and takes a deep breath. She knows what to do. She's seen it done before. Hogun and Eir have gone through the process more than once with her to satisfy her curiosity. _People who have magic_ , her mind rushes to remind her. Jane shakes her head. This will have to be her first field test in healing stones then.

Thank god the process is fairly straight forward.

She crushes the stone between her palms and lets the shimmering dust falls onto Loki.

For a frightening second she thinks she should have let him do it. That the stone's magic will not work under her hands. She's not magic, she's not Asgard, or even Jotunn. She's human and mortal, thin and fragile, and all she knows is science and facts. What if the magic of the stones does not work under her hands? She's seen the process more than once. She's seen Thor himself do it. Thor, who readily admits he has no skill in the kind magic his brother uses, but Thor is magic himself. Born of it, forged from it. Thor is Asgard, as is Loki in his own way. Jane is only Earth.

She keeps her eyes trained on the wound.

When she sees the visible skin knitting together and the edges of armour reforming over it, her heart soars, lightens, and beats too fast with relief all at once. She grins, turning to Loki, "It worked." The words rush out of her in heady relief and she rocks backwards, dropping back to the ground, her back cold against the dirt. They must make such a sight, half covered in dirt and rocks, lying head to feet by each other, Loki's blood pooled between them.

Suddenly so tired, Jane almost misses his answer.

"So it seems," his lips twist, and, ah! There's his customary sneer for her. "Without the magic of the spear or the wound troubling me anymore I should be able to free us soon. We will not be here much longer."

"Great."

Jane considers about moving back to lean against some rocks again, but it appears she can't move. Her body heavy and tired. She stays lying on the cave's floor. It's ceiling is rounded and smoother than she thought it would be. The patterns she was studying — star maps older than anything seen on Earth — seem to move as if they're reflecting the sky beyond it. The elves magic is so wonderfully subtle. She closes her eyes.

"You should use another stone to heal yourself," Loki says, slowly. His breathing already seems stronger.

Jane smiles. "The others were crushed."

"You stupid—" he starts, but Jane shifts a little and reaches out to pat his bloody hand. Her hand comes away sticky. She wipes it on her jeans.

"Don't worry, Thor will be here soon."

The amount of names he can call her is impressive, she has to admit. She's only hear him called Thor twice many names in such short a time and only in battle. Somewhat amused, Jane wonders if this means that he's finally starting to think of her as family.

The idea makes her laugh. Her chest burns; she coughs. Loki grows quiet until she done.

"It is no wonder that you and my brother are so fond of each other, you are both reckless to the point of death." His voice is stronger and she hears the slide of metal against rock.

"Internal bleeding, smarty pants. I don't think swallowing the rock would have worked." Her voice doesn't sound as strong as his anymore. She wonders who's paler now.

He mumbles something in the affirmative and if she had a mental tallying going on against Loki like she knows certain people (Tony, Clint, Johnny, Fandral, Darcy) do, she'd give herself a point. Since she doesn't she only focus on the sounds he's making and staying conscious.

"How come Asgard doesn't have star maps like these?"

The shifting sounds stop for a beat. The answer comes slow. "Asgard rarely looks up, only down."

Jane sighs, " _Deep_."

"You think I am mistaken?"

"Only a little."

"Oh? Please, enlighten me."

"Change is not something you all grasp easily and a lot of your history is verbal. You do have star maps, I've studied them, but they're not as up to date as some they can be and that aside from the sages and scholars no one thinks about them. And anyway if anyone wants to remember how the stars have changed all they have to do is look into their memories. You all live so long that you don't readily to worry about forgetting history. You guys have pretty long memories." Her last word comes out almost as hiss. The pain across her shoulder and collarbone is now piercing; a fierce burning pain she can barely think around of. The pain in her head now equal to it, too. Everything hurts even more and deeper than before. She probably strained something when she pulled the spear out.

"The elves can live just a long as we do."

"But do they? I've seen more elvish children than Asgardian children. One of the two kingdoms is worried about the population enduring and hint: it's not Asgard."

Instead of a verbal answer Jane hears a grunt -- her nonexistent mental tally has her at Jane: 2, Loki: 0 -- followed by sounds of rocks falling. She wants to open her eyes, but her eye lids feel so heavy. Like she's drugged. Like she can't wake up even thought she wants too. She bites her lips, concentrating. They still taste like copper and they feel dry like she's got a layer of crusted skin covering them. Wetting them, Jane realises, it's the dried blood flaking. Oh, right. So much for being a genius, Jane.

Jane forces her eyes slide open, barely. She sees the world through a haze of eye lashes. The world is white, black, brown, red and green.

Loki's dirty and bloody face.

"Hey, you're free."

"I said I would be."

"You did."

"Can you sit up?"

Jane shakes her head. Her eyes slide shut again. Loki mutters something and she feels his hand slip between her shoulder blades. She can feel the world shift. Her shirt catches on the edges of his armour. She feels the material rip at her elbow. Loki moves them so they're sitting against the closest set of rocks. The rocks are sharp against her back and Loki is sharp at her side.

Between a rock and dangerous place.

They do not lean on each other.

Jane coughs. She had wanted to laugh. The taste of pennies and salt fill her mouth. Loki shifts at her side.

"Stop laughing," he says. "You only make your injuries worse."

She didn't realise he had been paying attention to her coughs. "It's funny; you, me, and the cave."

"By the nine, please don't."

She doesn't open her eyes, but still rolls them. "In your dreams." Since Thor came into her life she's studied the myths very closely.

This time _he_ laughs. It comes in a little wheezy. "Nightmares, more like, and the myth is quite different."

"And they call you Silvertongue, _pffft_."

He laughs harder, still wheezy, "We must be dying if I'm finding that amusing."

"We must be," Jane says, breathes slow, "Thor's coming. He's more charming than you, too."

She thinks she can hear his eye roll, but doesn't open her eyes to confirm.

They're silent and then Jane realises she hates the silence. "You better?"

She can feel something shifting in the air. Loki's still at her side. "My strength is coming back, I should be able to get us out soon."

"That's nice."

"But it's entirely possibly I've lost too much blood and the air is getting thinner and we will not make it."

Silence falls over them again. Jane pays close attention to their breathing; they're out of sync. She inhales, he exhales. He exhales, she wheezes. They're still dying. Maybe she's closer to it now.

"I should have tried to swallow the rock."

Loki huffs a chuckle next to her. "Like I said, stupid—"

He's cut off by the sounds of rocks cracking under the sound of metal and a loud familiar yell. The cave shakes and she hears Loki curse, mutter something, and then, "Bloody fool, you would have crushed us further!"

Thor's voice follows, "Jane! Brother! You are alive, thank Idunn!" His footsteps pound across the cave floor. Jane can hear Sif's own muttered thanks to Idunn and lighter footsteps moving closer.

"You are lucky I had enough strength to magic a shield against the debris you just caused!" Loki bites out, "Careful! She is injured!" For a second Jane wonders what happened to Sif when she realises Loki's talking about her as the familiar feel of Thor's arms wrap around her. Thor lifts her carefully and even as she relaxes in arms she grimaces. Her shoulder still hurts, more than she ever thought it could, and so does her leg. Thor's like a furnace around her and she wants to give into the urge to fall into the darkness of sleep.

She forces her eyes open. She had saved her energy just for this.

Thor's face is full of worry, his eyes dark and mouth grim. She's seen this look before, at enemies, mostly Loki, never at her. She used be the one thing that didn't make him frown. It's still the most beautiful frown in the world to Jane.

She smiles, "Hey, you."

"Hello, Jane." She loves how her name sounds from his lips.

"Ask your brother who saved his butt," she curls her fingers into the hair at the nape of Thor's neck. "Told him you'd come."

From somewhere out of her line of sight, which is Thor's face, she hears Sif's snort and Loki's grunt, but all that matters is how Thor's face brightens for the briefest of second as he leads them out of the cave. They're not even two steps away from the opening when Thor calls for Heimdall. She and Loki must be in pretty bad shape because they normally make sure to walk to the origin site Heimdall deposits them at. As the energy of the Bifrost drops down around them Jane rests her forehead against Thor's jaw, his beard prickling her skin.

Darkness calls for her and for a second Jane sees a two-toned face with a familiar twist of lips shaking her head and waving at her.

When Jane wakes up, it's in her and Thor's bed. Her body feels heavy like it's been asleep for too long. Thor's leaps up from his chair as she tries to sit up and wraps her in a hug.

"You are gaining a dangerous habit of saving us Odinsons at your own risk, Jane." His arms are tight around her. She can feel their strength and their love. They both humble her and she clings back. She'll never be as physically strong as him but can and does loves him back with equal measure.

"Tell me about it." Jane presses a kiss to the skin of Thor's neck closest to her lip and leans back. His hold loosens but he doesn't let go. They lie back down, an adjustment to their normal arrangement with Thor settling on her left instead of her right, his arm over her waist instead of around her back. The small twinge in her shoulder and light soreness of her muscles hint at why. She doesn't have to often get healed the way Thor does, but when she does Eir tries to be very careful; mortal body after all. Jane rests her cheek by his heart, letting its steady beat relax her.

She doesn't miss the pile of star maps and texts on her night table and snorts.

Thor follows her gaze, rubbing his nose against her temple. She can tell he's smiling even without looking up. "He'll never admit it."

Jane knows, but the funny thing is that she realises she doesn't mind. She never really did. But still, she hopes this means that Loki will stop that ridiculous sneer each time he talks to her. She's an optimist.


End file.
